page_title: Cary Grant
section_title: Post-War success and slump (1946–1954)
hierarchical_section_title: Cary Grant / Film career / Post-War success and slump (1946–1954)
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo from the 1949 film I Was a Male War Bride with Cary Grant. There are no copyright marks on the item. United States Copyright Office page 2 "Visually Perceptible Copies The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all three elements described below. They should appear together or in close proximity on the copies. 1 The symbol © (letter C in a circle); the word “Copyright”; or the abbreviation “Copr.” 2 The year of first publication. If the work is a derivative work or a compilation incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the derivative work or compilation is sufficient. Examples of derivative works are translations or dramatizations; an example of a compilation is an anthology. The year may be omitted when a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, with accompanying textual matter, if any, is reproduced in or on greeting cards, postcards, stationery, jewelry, dolls, toys, or useful articles. 3 The name of the copyright owner, an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of owner.1 Example © 2007 Jane Doe."
context_page_description: Cary Grant was an English-born American actor, who was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He is known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing.
  Grant was born in Horfield, Bristol. He became attracted to theater at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome. At the age of 16, he went as a stage performer with the Pender Troupe for a tour of the US. After a series of successful performances in New York City, he decided to stay there. He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s.
  Grant initially appeared in crime films or dramas such as Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich and She Done Him Wrong with Mae West, but later gained renown for his performances in romantic and screwball comedies such as The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne, Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story with Hepburn and James Stewart. These pictures are frequently cited among the greatest comedy films of all time.
context_section_description: After making a brief cameo appearance opposite Claudette Colbert in Without Reservations (1946), Grant portrayed Cole Porter in the musical Night and Day (1946). The production proved to be problematic, with scenes often requiring multiple takes, frustrating the cast and crew. Grant next appeared with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains in the Hitchcock-directed film Notorious (1946), playing a government agent who recruits the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy (Bergman) to infiltrate a Nazi organization in Brazil after World War II. During the course of the film Grant and Bergman's characters fall in love and share one of the longest kisses in film history at around two-and-a-half minutes. Wansell notes how Grant's performance "underlined how far his unique qualities as a screen actor had matured in the years since The Awful Truth".
  In 1947, Grant played an artist who becomes involved in a court case when charged with assault in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (released in the U.K. as "Bachelor Knight"), opposite Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. The film was praised by the critics, who admired the picture's slapstick qualities and chemistry between Grant and Loy; it became one of the biggest-selling films at the box office that year. Later that year he starred opposite David Niven and Loretta Young in the comedy The Bishop's Wife, playing an angel who is sent down from heaven to straighten out the relationship between the bishop (Niven) and his wife (Loretta Young). The film was a major commercial and critical success, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. Life magazine called it "intelligently written and competently acted". The following year, Grant played neurotic Jim Blandings, the title-sake in the comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, again with Loy. Though the film lost money for RKO, Philip T. Hartung of Commonweal thought that Grant's role as the "frustrated advertising man" was one of his best screen portrayals. In Every Girl Should Be Married, an "airy comedy", he appeared with Betsy Drake and Franchot Tone, playing a bachelor who is trapped into marriage by Drake's conniving character. He finished the year as the fourth most popular film star at the box office.
  In 1949, Grant starred alongside Ann Sheridan in the comedy I Was a Male War Bride in which he appeared in scenes dressed as a woman, wearing a skirt and a wig. During the filming he was taken ill with infectious hepatitis and lost weight, affecting the way he looked in the picture. The film proved to be successful, becoming the highest-grossing film for 20th Century Fox that year with over $4.5 million in takings and being likened to Hawks's screwball comedies of the late 1930s. By this point he was one of the highest paid Hollywood stars, commanding $300,000 per picture.
  The early 1950s marked the beginning of a slump in Grant's career. His roles as a top brain surgeon who is caught in the middle of a bitter revolution in a Latin American country in Crisis, and as a medical-school professor and orchestra conductor opposite Jeanne Crain in People Will Talk were poorly received. Grant had become tired of being Cary Grant after twenty years, being successful, wealthy and popular, and remarked: "To play yourself, your true self, is the hardest thing in the world". In 1952, Grant starred in the comedy Room for One More, playing an engineer husband who with his wife (Betsy Drake) adopt two children from an orphanage. He reunited with Howard Hawks to film the off-beat comedy Monkey Business, co-starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Though the critic from Motion Picture Herald wrote gushingly that Grant had given a career's best with an "extraordinary and agile performance", which was matched by Rogers, it received a mixed reception overall. Grant had hoped that starring opposite Deborah Kerr in the romantic comedy Dream Wife would salvage his career, but it was a critical and financial failure upon release in July 1953. Though he was considered for the leading part in A Star is Born, Grant believed that his film career was over, and brie
caption: Grant dressed as a woman with Ann Sheridan in I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
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